This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art that may be related to various aspects of the present invention, which are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
In the field of medicine, doctors often desire to monitor certain physiological characteristics of their patients. Accordingly, a wide variety of devices have been developed for monitoring many such characteristics of a patient. Such devices provide doctors and other health care personnel with the information they need to provide the best possible healthcare for their patients. As a result, such monitoring devices have become an indispensable part of modern medicine.
One technique for monitoring certain physiological characteristics of a patient is commonly referred to as pulse oximetry, and the devices built based upon pulse oximetry techniques are commonly referred to as pulse oximeters. Pulse oximetry may be used to measure various blood flow characteristics, such as the blood-oxygen saturation of hemoglobin in arterial blood, the volume of individual blood pulsations supplying the tissue, and/or the rate of blood pulsations corresponding to each heart beat of a patient. In fact, the “pulse” in pulse oximetry refers to the time varying amount of arterial blood in the tissue during each cardiac cycle.
Pulse oximeters typically utilize a non-invasive sensor that transmits electromagnetic radiation, such as light, through a patient's tissue and then photo-electrically detects the absorption and scattering of the transmitted light in such tissue. One or more of the above mentioned physiological characteristics may then be calculated based upon the amount of light absorbed and scattered. More specifically, the light passed through the tissue is typically selected to be of one or more wavelengths that may be absorbed and scattered by the blood in an amount correlative to the amount of blood constituent present in the tissue. The measured amount of light absorbed and scattered may then be used to estimate the amount of blood constituent in the tissue using various algorithms.
The pulse oximetry measurement depends in part on an assumption that the contribution of detected light that has not passed through a patient's tissue is negligible. This assumption, however, may not be accurate. Specifically, light shunting may occur, wherein light transmitted from an emitter in the sensor may arrive at a detector without first having traveled through the patient's tissue. The light shunting may cause measurement variations that do not relate to the amount of blood constituent and, therefore, may lead to inaccurate measurements.